Public Safety committee  I would say if you have the external accountability, which triggers people being moved into the community so that they can have the services provided in the community and an array of options--from those who aren't a risk to the public to those who are acutely psychotic who may need a very intensive, secure forensic setting--to have those services provided in a community context; i.e., being governed by the mental health system, not by the corrections system.

Public Safety committee  Thank you. You said more eloquently what I was just trying to say a minute ago in response to your previous question. Again, one of the recommendations made by Louise Arbour and repeated by the correctional investigator in the most recent report is for a someone with mental health expertise to make an independent review of those who are currently in segregation.

Public Safety committee  Certainly the examples.... Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York has a similar model for mental health system services for prisoners. It is run by the psychiatric hospital in New York. Some really important units once existed in the U.K. but they have since been shut down.

Public Safety committee  It would be my opinion, yes, that they could. The law currently, as it exists, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, would allow that. In fact, Corrections routinely sends individuals to psychiatric institutions in jurisdictions. The obvious one people know about and was discussed is the Phillippe Pinel Institute, which has a separate unit.

Public Safety committee  The more limited access is to conditional release options. The more the statutory provisions allow, and in fact are supposed to ensure, that they happen, the more we'll see these individuals not being able to earn their way out. Right now, people have to earn their way out. I can tell you that the women I'm talking about, including women who go back and forth now from the community to Pinel, who used to go back and forth from psychiatric hospitals to segregation units--and there was a lot of intervention to break that cycle--are individuals who would continue to be in the system right now if we didn't have interventions like statutory release.

Public Safety committee  Yes, I would. And if the committee doesn't already have a copy of the report that Human Rights Watch International did—and it's five years old, I think, now—where they talked about the number of people with mental health issues being higher in prisons than in any mental health institutions in the United States, it would be very useful, because I think a lot of these issues are also canvassed there, in addition to the excellent report done by Michael Jackson and Graham Stewart.

Public Safety committee  I do agree with that. Yesterday I saw two of those women. In fact, the woman who I mentioned would be another one of those women had she not been released earlier in the summer. And there are other women, as well, who I mentioned. So I'm very happy, if there's an opportunity, to provide more details about some of those women.

Public Safety committee  Yes, we do agree with the recommendation of Madam Arbour. In fact we, the correctional investigator, and a number of other groups at the Arbour commission recommended a completely separate system because of the manner in which male corrections influences negatively what happens with women.

Public Safety committee  I want to thank you for inviting us here. I also want to bring regrets from my president, Lucie Joncas, who had hoped to attend, but I think it's in part a reflection of the volume of what's coming before us that she was not able to. One of the things I'd like to start with was also one of the questions posed to the Correctional Service of Canada in the last session.

Justice committee  And I'm not aware of any either.

Justice committee  No, it was a life-10 sentence. One was deported, and the other is out.

Justice committee  One of the two men who were responsible was deported when he became eligible. It was a second degree murder conviction.

Justice committee  The figure 19% to 20% was for 2007 or 2008. I'm told it may be as high as 25% today. I couldn't find the figure for today.

Justice committee  I only know that of the women in the cases I was involved with, in three of the women's cases victims actually appeared—

Justice committee  Yes, three out of nine; and two others had written statements.